Suella Braverman vows to stamp out grooming gangs behind organised child sex abuse

[IwantToRetire]

The Home Secretary, writing in The Mail on Sunday, pledges to 'track down and punish the grooming gangs with the same sense of mission and determination' used to pursue the murderers of Stephen Lawrence, the black British teenager who was killed in a racially motivated attack at a bus stop in South London in 1993.

Ms Braverman, who was born in Harrow, in North-West London, to a Kenyan mother and Mauritian father, writes: 'The time has come to make right one of the greatest injustices seen in Britain in modern times. The systematic rape, exploitation and abuse of young girls by organised gangs of older men – and the disgraceful failure of the authorities to act despite ample evidence – is a stain on our country.'

A Buddhist, Ms Braverman describes the 'perpetrators' as 'groups of men, almost all British-Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11928629/SUELLA-BRAVERMAN-mission-ensure-really-no-hiding-place-gangs-grooming-young-girls.html

I am not sure if this is just the DM take on what she said, or if it accurately reflects what she said.

If she did say this and not talk about how men of all cultures, given the opportunity, have and will exploit young women, then she is letting down all the women who are exploited.

You would expect most of the criminals in a majority white country to be white. I don’t understand your point. There have been dozens of instances involving vulnerable white field being targgeted by Pakistani men. One of the reasons the police didn’t intervene was because they didn’t want to be accused of racism.

If so, she needs to practise a bit harder. Bloody hell.

Why?

TBH I hadn’t noticed it, it is more ‘illegal immigrants’ or ‘economic migrants’ or ‘asylum-seekers’.

Perhaps it is a short hand for ‘false asylum applicants’ or some such thing.

Since I have no grounds to seek asylum- the UK is a safe country, they would send me straight back home, unless I turned up with no documents and told lies.

In less than an hour, jgw has managed to make it about a different topic.

Yes it's a deliberate derail from a really important topic.

She is vilified or rather criticised because she and her Govt have totally failed, there were a couple of 100 migrants crossing the channel in 2019, in 2022, 45000.

She was also sacked for endangering national security, as would anyone who had security clearance and used their own device to send out Govt emails BUT then given her job back, what a joke!

Sunak got no returns agreement with France, despite the fanfare, if we were still in the EU, we'd automatically have a returns agreement, we don't hence the UK's growing popularity.

When actions met the words, then perhaps we can take what Sunak and Braverman say more serious.

Btw, a minister on Sky this morning 100% disagreed with Braverman.

You are making excuses for the continued exploitation of criminal trafficking gangs which ruthlessly exploit people both overseas and then here. Every country has a right to control its borders. Many of these migrants are going from one country to the next after having their applications turned down.

It is a well organised criminal racket - with albanian migrants paying gangs to transport them in small boats. Many of them actually fly into Barcelona first of all ( where burglary rates have risen on account of this - I know because my son lives in Barcelona) from where they make their way to Paris, before arriving at the channel.

They then disappear once in Britain and end up in illegal activities, as well as being trafficked and forced to work in cannabis factories.

Stop making excuses of the 'be kind' variety - which is also used to try to silence women who want to maintain their boundaries too in the face of TRA demands for entry. All healthy orgamism reqire boundaries; to protect from predators; to protect from bad actors; to protect from exploitation; to preserve dignity and cohesion.

I know I am annoying. But I don’t think I can remember a Home Secretary who hasn’t been despised. However. Suella Braveman is my favourite.

So you think the government they should have been harder far sooner?

Based on her rhetoric OR what i said?

Because Rwanda or any other country is not going to work, these countries are either not safe or they cannot take many migrants or both remember, its 45k in 2022, there are over 1m migrants living in the UK with any sort of valid paper work.... its all hot air.

But what would have worked are Returns Agreements but out of the EU, they will never be agreed.

We are where we are and it would be nice if the Govt accepted this and told us the truth, which is there will be even more crossings in 2023, weather dependent.

She is perhaps the least competent, May was on top of her brief, Patel knew what went on in her dept, Braverman wings it.

I had SC clearance, using a personal phone/device to send work/govt sensitive emails is a guaranteed way to lose it and after than, you don't get it back.

Its drummed into you never ever to do this, as is having any 3rd aprty apps (non approved) on your device.

The topic appears to be about the Home Secretary's dog whistle to a part of the core Conservative electorate. If discussing other occassions when she has done the same thing is derailling the thread, then I must apologise.

I merely stated what the law says.

If you don't like the law, then by all means say so. You'll probably be shocked to learn which country insisted that the 1951 Convention was clear that an asylum seeker could seek asylum in any safe country.

It does feel like tiny steps in the right direction are being made. One woman recently managed to sue Asghar Bostan, the man who raped her when she was 15, for 425k on top of his 9 year prison sentence. I hope this opens the floodgates for other women and girls to step forward and do the same.

Yes, exactly this, floradora.

Also strongly agree with much of this from SquidwardBound :
Actually uncovering what’s going on and solving the real problem to safeguard vulnerable women and girls - regardless of how ‘palatable’ the truth is to certain ideological positions - is exactly what we should be aiming for.

I don’t think that, rhetorically, braverman helps us get there though. She’s the Home Secretary, so I think we can expect her to communicate this stuff more effectively.

Instead what we get is reactionary shite about dog whistles and such like.

Yes, she does need to raise issues of how culture may intersect with misogyny and classism in this type of crime. And, of course, we actually need to know what role that plays.

But I don’t believe that braveman’s approach to present this as an evil British-Pakistani other is the best way to achieve what we need to. As the ‘dog whistle’ responses show, it makes it all too easy to fit people to just dismiss this as populist racism playing to the brexity gammon crowd (feel free to swap for whichever other crap insults you like there).

That’s not expecting women to police their tone or speech or whatever. Because she’s the Home Secretary speaking about a terrible problem within her professional portfolio.

What is Braverman’s intent here?

Is there a genuine underlying effort to improve safeguarding of vulnerable women and girls (which I would applaud), and she has just communicated it poorly?

Or is she merely throwing around words for electioneering?

At the moment, it unfortunately looks like the latter.

As PP have said, the Tories have had 12+ years to do something about this, in which time what they’ve actually done is cut funding to the services needed to protect women and girls, cut funding to the care system, cut funding to the police and cut funding to the justice system needed to prosecute offenders.

She’s offering a “consultation,” not real money, not even to deal with cases already known that are stuck in courts backlog. She’s explicitly made it about “vulnerable white girls”, and British-Pakistani men, ignoring girls who are not white and avoiding any mention of predominantly white gangs of sex offenders (eg as exposed in Operation Yewtree).

And she’s waited till right before an election to do this.

So the signs aren’t good. I’m sorry if you don’t like the term dog whistle, which I agree I’ve seen misused sometimes. But in this case, Braverman’s choice of words looks a lot like one.

I’d be very pleased to be wrong about both her intent and the likely real-life outcomes of her words, because I’d be delighted if there were a reduction in child sexual abuse and violence against women and girls, and I’d be pleased to see more offenders caught and convicted (all of them, not just the special groups).

But like you, I don’t think “ present [ing]this as an evil British-Pakistani other is the best way to achieve what we need to”.

This was absolutely brilliant!

As you say, hope this opens the floodgates.

She is just stoking racial tension to boost her popularity. The cynical cow couldn't find her arse with both hands never mind stamp out the abuse of women and girls.

All these people that just don't seem to want anything done about it. Very telling.

You mean like the Home Secretary who has consistently supported the government in which she servers cutting services and then has issued a whole load of hot air today?

Yes.

“Plus why is she highlighting Pakistani men when the evidence is that its White British men who are the main people doing this? “

First, the evidence we have is very poor and all reports state you cannot draw any firm conclusion at all as to ethnicity of grooming gangs. Secondly, the evidence we do have indicates that proportionally, Asians (esp Pakistani) are over-represented as being in grooming gangs. Which means that they are far more likely than white British to be doing it. Thirdly, the evidence shows that it’s not just men, but also women in these gangs. Fourthly, the biggest concern is the fact that recent events have shown that due to police fears of racism and classism towards the victims that the Asian gangs get away with their crimes for far longer and therefore have more victims.

These are all issues as to why she mentioned Pakistani men over other men and the few women, because they are statistically based on the poor evidence we have so far are the most likely demographic to be offenders.

Your logic is exactly like wondering why there is concern about black women dying in childbirth when it’s mainly white women dying in childbirth. This is a white majority country so you have to look at whether the numbers are proportionate to see if there is any issue. The fact is black women are more than twice as likely, in some places 3x more likely, to die in childbirth than a white woman even though more whites women die when you just look at raw numbers without applying any thought to what the numbers actually signify.

So many people seem to be bricking it about a possible far-right backlash. On a different thread a poster got me to look at links about the rise of extremism in the UK according to intelligence gathering.

Guess what? Hardly anything to write about from the far right - which disproved her point.

An international convention means that they didn't break UK law, based on their intention to claim asylum? It may say that they have a right to claim asylum in such and such cases, but I'm not sure that would mean that they technically didn't break UK law in the process. (Of course some asylum seekers can be here lawfully in theory.)

But even if we imagine that the law doesn't apply, "illegal" could just mean what-would-normally-be-an-illegal-entry.